Different
by The Manatee
Summary: Things are different now. Utterly different. There is no going back. The past must not repeat.


AN: This idea has been crawling around in my skull for ages, and being sick, I haven't had much to do aside from think. I am back to working my sixty hours a week, but since I'm working from home, I manage everything at my own pace. I do hope you enjoy this travel with me, as sick and as twisted as it may seem.

_'Enclosed italics':_ thoughts

**Bold:** demon speaking in a human's mind

WARNINGS: incest, homosexuality, physical abuse, rape, pedophilia, necrophilia, and so much more. Don't like? Don't read. Duh.

Prologue: Memories

_A demon sat on our outer walkway when I was young. His long fingers clasped neatly around his long pipe, tiny and delicate tendrils of smoke drifting off into some unknown space. He only ever came at night. I think he preferred the silence. Our house was so terribly loud during the day. At least, for awhile._

_I remember one night I was unable to sleep. Something, I didn't know what, kept rousing me from sleep. I was too young to understand that it was evil creeping over the thresholds of our doors. On that night, I pulled myself slowly out of my bedroll and slid the door open with practiced silence. I only opened it just a crack, only wanting to see out into the lavish garden that at that time surrounded our house completely. The dark stain of the polished wood floors gleamed in the moonlight. It was almost like blood._

_I was watching the moon, wishing that I could float through the night sky, looking down on a sleeping world. That's when I saw him walking wordlessly through the manicured shrubs encasing the walkway through the gardens. His skin glistened in much the same way as the moon, and his eyes sank away into unforgiving portals of darkness. That night he was wearing a white kimono, head to toe, the obi fastened tightly around his waist, while the rest of the garment was left flowing. The silk raised and rippled, as if in a wind, but the air was still. _

_His pale feet stepped up onto the raised walkway surrounding our home, and he was so tall that he had to duck under the eaves of the house, raising his hand to them as a man entering a restaurant would raise the service curtain. His toes were long, clawed, and spread as he took the step upward. _

_I held my breath, half terrified, half in awe of the enormous being as it mounted the final step. For some reason, I recall noticing that his feet were perfectly clean, despite the lack of sandals. The air smelled of rain._

_He settled himself with his back to my door, and my breath was like iron in my lugs. I waited for him to kill me. After all, mother always said demons ate little children who were out and about past their bedtimes._

_The demon didn't eat me, but he did speak. Quite, calm, and chilling as he bent forward, his long black bangs obscuring his face but not his voice._

_"You should sleep, child," he spoke to me, "It will be the last untroubled sleep you will have for many years. Madness lingers here."_

_He turned his head to me, locking my blue eyes in his endless ones, and when he lit his pipe, both of our eyes glowed shortly with the golden light. One beautifully clawed finger reached towards me in the waning brightness, and with the slightest touch to my forehead, I was asleep._

The young man timidly placed a small bunch of pale flowers near the tall, wooden grave marker that denoted not where his parents were buried, but rather the place where he might pray for them. Their bodies weren't here, or anywhere, anymore. They'd been burned up years ago and sprinkled into the river. He bowed his head in reverence, and said a small and humble prayer to the gods on behalf of his mother. Her soul deserved every prayer that could aid it on its' journey in the afterlife.

He raised his blonde head, the wind ruffling the wild tufts of sunshine, and he spat on his father's grave marker.

'Rot in hell, you bastard.'

He had stopped caring long ago about what karma this act might bring around. He had had the worst life could deal him, let the rain come.

He gathered the small rag and bottle of oil he had used to polish his mother's grave marker, and slowly made his way out of the maze of a cemetery to the streets of a very changed city. He glanced around at the other occupants of the small village, and was once again reminded that he was well seated in the minority. Not that he cared.

Two years ago, just before his father's death, and a year after his mother's, a revolution had begun. The cities once heavily populated with humans now had hardly a soul. Instead, the soulless walked the streets, day and night. Or, at least, that was what the priests of the temple preached from sunrise to sunset on their soap boxes. As far as Naruto was concerned, a single demon had a larger soul than an entire population of humans.

_I watched as the priests left again. It had been four days, and father still wouldn't let them into the house. Mother hadn't spoken. She was still._

_I could hear father wailing, though I couldn't be sure if it was from grief or anger. I heard glass shattering inside the house._

_I sat with my feet hanging idly off the edge of our raised walkway, staring out at the lush green of the garden. The garden was the only normal thing now. The bushes still grew, the flowers still blossomed, the frogs still croaked. Nothing in the garden cared that mother was dead. Nothing noticed her, or me, or father._

_I was little, but I still had some vague idea of what the sounds coming from mother's bedroom meant. I had been caught once the previous year, walking into their bedroom when I heard such a sound. I had thought they were wrestling, but apparently that's what making a little brother looked like._

_I wondered how a little brother could come out of mother now. She was so still. Would the baby be still like her? If mother didn't eat, how would the baby grow? It was important to finish your meals, or you never grew strong and tall. That's what mother had always said._

_The noises stopped and I wondered if I would be having a new little brother. I would like one, I knew that. A little brother to play in the garden with._

_I looked up, and saw the demon for the first time in the daylight. He was standing in the shade, and at first, I didn't know if I had seen him. But he saw me. His eyes looked into mine. They were wet; leaking. The demon was crying. Another one came from the shadows of the trees, much like the other in appearance. I began to wonder if the taller one was his brother. It would be nice to have a brother. A little brother to play in the garden with._

_I saw his jaw tighten, the way father's had when the doctor came out of mommy's room and told us that she was gone. But she was still there. I didn't understand what the doctor meant._

_I wondered why the demon was sad._

His sandals clacked quietly against the pristine cobbled streets of the village. Everything was clean now. Clean and green and glistening. The other humans couldn't see past their upturned noses to see the reality before them.

The streets were clean and free of filth and debris. There were no tiny hands begging for loose change, or diseased and drunken adults lurking in any alley. One could walk in total darkness, completely alone, and know that they would be entirely safe. The demons politely bowed to each other, thanked each other sincerely for goods and services, and were always willing to lend a helping hand. Tiny human hands held larger demon ones as they walked in tandem past the brightly colored storefronts.

The children understood. Or perhaps they were too young to understand that there was any difference. Parents walked their children to school, demon and human alike. At least, the demons did. It had been nearly a year since the last successful attempt on the life of a demon child. The parents had been devastated. Naruto remembered bringing flowers to their home a few days after the incident. They had thanked him so kindly that he had burst into tears.

Naruto pushed open the gate to the tall wall that surrounded his new home. Most of the upper village had been burned away and reconstructed. Naruto would tell himself it was because the buildings were old and needed to be replaced. But he knew better; everyone did. The ashes had helped seal away the terrible memories.

_I laid perfectly still, trying not to wake father. He was sleeping. He must have been very tired._

_I looked down at my stomach, finding shapes in the purple blotches that were covering my skin. I ran my hands over them, the skin sticky with red and white fluid._

_Was there a little brother in there now? Or would he be my son? How was he going to get out?_

_Father stirred._

AN: Well, that is the prologue. There is much to come, if I can get it out of my brain before it withers and dies. Your comments make me slightly less inclined to suicide.


End file.
